


Safe and Sound

by ByeByeLove



Series: Fragile [3]
Category: British Actor RPF, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Character Death, M/M, Suicide, Terminal Illnesses, i don't know why, sad sad sad just sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-31
Updated: 2014-05-31
Packaged: 2018-01-27 16:15:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1716815
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ByeByeLove/pseuds/ByeByeLove
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In Midgard’s time it is eleven months after Svartalfaheim that they first meet.</p><p>Eight months after that is when Loki gets his first headache.</p><p>Six months after that is when they first kiss.</p><p>Five months after that is when Loki gets a tremor in his hand.</p><p>Two months after that is when, well…</p><p>Because a body is just a body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Safe and Sound

**Author's Note:**

> I'm honestly not sure why I kept going with this series, but yeah.  
> This is also a surprise, I don't want to give anything away, but this is sad, sad, sad, my intent was to make you cry, so be prepared for that.  
> Anyway, enjoy!

It was never really outside the realm of possibility.

A body, Loki knew, was just a body.

Frigga had told them so, he and Thor, when they were younger.

That a body was just a vessel, that it wears and tears as anything can, that the soul was what made a body more than what it was.

Loki told himself this when Frigga died, that her body had stopped, that was it, but it didn’t hurt any less to lose her soul.

And so Loki knew that his body was just a body, and that eventually it would just be armor that had chipped and scuffed and abraded until it could no longer be fixed.

*

In Midgard’s time it is eleven months after Loki joined Thor on Svartalfaheim that they first meet.

Tom thinks of the first time he saw Loki.

He’d stood, frowning, on the set as the crew hurried and walked around him.

He remembers the way the wind blew his hair about, the hem of his coat, he remembers the glittering eyes, trained on himself.

He remembers trying not to obviously watch him.

Most of all he remembers thinking, wondering what it would take to gain his trust, his respect, what it would take to crack that cold exterior and find what was underneath, what warmth he might find.

Tom can’t reconcile that Loki with the Loki he knows now, after he has gained that respect and trust, now he thinks of how untouchable Loki looked then.

He remembers being awed and he has never stopped feeling that way since.

He hopes he never does.

*

When Loki first brings Tom to Asgard, Thor finds him in the library while Tom is sleeping.

“A mortal?” Thor asks and Loki raises an eyebrow at him in challenge. “Is it so wise?”

And Loki selects his book on medicines and smiles at Thor and says slowly. “Is it ever wise?”

Thor doesn’t answer because no, Loki knows, it’s never wise to fall in love, to love, _to be loved_.

But if it was wise, if it made sense, then no one would do it.

*

Seven months after they meet is when Loki gets his first headache.

Loki wakes him screaming from his room.

And Tom jumps awake and up and runs in there, fully expecting a nightmare, one of those raging, screaming, violent episodes that make Tom’s hair stand on end.

But it isn’t.

It’s just Loki, his face buried in a pillow, hands clenched in the cover as he tries in vain to muffle his scream of absolute, unfiltered pain.

He’d held Loki close, pulled him into his stomach and Loki had clutched tight and close and hard and it was painful, so painful to watch and listen to and Tom didn’t know what to do except wait, wait until he’d turned quiet and shivering.

“Thomas,” Loki had whispered once he was done, roughly ten hours later when the sun was just breaking over the horizon, his voice was rough from overuse and Tom had run fingers through his hair and smiled down at him. “Water.”

And Tom had gotten him water and that was that and if Loki got another headache he never mentioned it and he hid it well.

*

Four months after the first headache is when they first kiss.

Loki knows he should have done it better, done it differently.

Tom deserves so much better than Loki can give him and Loki is aware of this, aware that he should have done so much more than he did.

He feels like he stole their first kiss, as if it wasn’t his to take, but he did take it, he did make it his and he has no way to change that.

So he works every day, on every kiss after that, on everything he says, on every move he makes, to make up for it.

He’s a cruel, manipulative god that takes what he wants, selfish and conniving, but he knows when amends are due.

*

To be perfectly honest, Tom doesn’t want to know what comes after this.

What comes after _Loki and death_ and what Loki will do after _Tom and death_.

He asks just the one time and wakes up sore and abused and bruised and maybe he never asks again just to avoid that pain of the next day, even though Loki heals him up gently and then loves him slowly in apology after.

No, he doesn’t ask again because it scares him to think of Loki either never moving on or moving on too fast.

Because Tom knows that if Loki were to go first, he would have no idea what to do.

So he doesn’t even want to know what such a mercurial, changeable god like Loki would do.

*

Three months after the first kiss is when Loki gets a tremor in his hand.

When the tremor sets in, Loki stares at his hand for a long time.

It strikes him as odd, but nothing of note, because tremors have happened in the past, but this won’t go away and when Loki combines it with the headaches he doesn’t know what it means.

He goes to Asgard and meets the healers who run their tests and their scans and dig into his body and dissect it and study his brain and his hand and his spine and his nerves and veins and—

“Dying?” Loki repeats, thinking he heard them wrong.

Eir, the healer in charge, presses her lips together into a thin line as if she disapproves of Loki asking for clarification.

“Your body is deteriorating, my prince, the damages caused by your fall,” she pauses, and Loki knows they still don’t forgive him, not even after all this time. “Then the chitauri’s torture, then the attack of the dark elves, have all led your body to deconstruct before it’s time. This is how your body perceives itself.”

She flicks her fingers over the particles and Loki sees his body, marred and broken and ripped apart, fingers broken and bones crushed, and skin missing and muscle gone and it makes Loki slightly sick to think of it.

“You’ve healed yourself, but,” she pauses again and she sounds genuinely sympathetic. “But your body is tired, my prince, it’s time has come and there is nothing to be done about it.”

Loki stares at the particle rendition of himself for another moment before he turns and leaves without another word.

*

Tom isn’t stupid.

He knows Loki knows that, because Loki tells him all the time how smart and clever he is; whether it’s because Tom caught him in a lie or because Tom wants to try a new position the next time they fuck.

So Tom doesn’t understand why Loki consistently tries to hide things from him because Tom will always figure it out.

Because Tom knows Loki better than Loki knows himself sometimes and Loki seems to forget this fact most of the time.

So when Loki returns from Asgard and doesn’t say a word of his trip, Tom knows that something is wrong, that he is hiding something.

But Tom isn’t sure he wants to know the things that Loki hides in cases like these when he is so lost in his own thoughts, hands nearly always clenched in tight fists and eyes closed.

*

“Time?” Tom repeats and Loki sighs.

“Time.” Loki says and kisses him until he forgets.

Later, when Loki is plastered to his side, sleeping the sleep of the desperately exhausted, he remembers a conversation he had with Loki just a few days ago.

_“What would you do if I died first?” He’d asked, tracing glowing lines of seiðr from one freckle to another on Tom’s back._

_Tom had turned and regarded him curiously. “Give up, go on, need you until I die, want you for the rest of my life, love you forever, never forget you, never let you go.” Loki stopped tracing and met Tom’s eyes, his own green ones were damp and sparkling in the moonlight that streamed through the open window. “But you won’t will you?”_

_And Loki had looked down at Tom’s back and smiled and said. “I can’t make any promises.”_

And now Tom thinks that perhaps Loki can’t because he is going to.

He is going to die first and Tom doesn’t know what to do with that information.

*

“Were you never going to tell me?” Tom asks a few days later, now that he’s had time to think about it and Loki looks up, head cocked to the side.

“Tell you what?” And Tom isn’t stupid.

So he gets up off the floor and takes the book from Loki’s hands, setting it carefully on the end table before climbing into Loki’s lap and kissing his temple.

“That you’re dying.” He whispers into Loki’s ear, like a question and a curse, and he can feel Loki’s body quiver, shaking and trembling underneath him and he presses his face to Loki’s neck and listens to him breathe.

“No,” Loki says, pressing his left hand against Tom’s back and Tom can feel the tremors, the shaking and shivering of his hand and he wonders how he never noticed it before. “I wasn’t.”

And Tom takes a deep breath of Loki’s scent because he doesn’t know how long he will be able to do so, how long he will have this before it’s gone.

*

Tom tries not to change the way he acts around Loki and he’s mostly successful.

He doesn’t coddle him, because he knows Loki would hate that.

He doesn’t pamper him, because Loki despises it.

He doesn’t treat him any different and it’s easy, so easy, because Loki is still functioning, he’s still using his seiðr adeptly and his fingers are still nimble, though his left hand, the one that shakes, is cordoned off to being useless in his lap most of the time.

And it’s easy, for the most part.

But it’s also hard, because Loki drops things and he still gets headaches that have him screaming into the pillow and now his eyes get blurry, his vision fading in and out in his left eye sometimes, and he stumbles a bit too, his balance a little off.

It’s a slow death, Tom thinks, watching Loki rub his temple, made even slower by the fact that nothing can be done to change it.

*

Loki rolls into him one night, brings him to arousal slowly and rides him languidly, gasping into his mouth and holding a hand in his hair as he moves his hips in a rhythm that mesmerizes Tom to no end.

He comes with a surprised moan that Tom catches in his mouth and pushes up into him, prolongs his orgasm and rolls them over and Loki hitches trembling legs around his ribs and shaking arms around his shoulders and arches his back and squeezes his muscles around Tom where he is moving inside him and Tom buries his face in Loki’s throat and it is possibly the most gentle sex they’ve ever had.

After, when Tom is running a thumb over Loki’s spine in a tantalizing slide of sweaty skin and warm muscle, he asks. “Why?”

And Loki kisses his throat and says. “Because soon I may not be able to.”

It only gets worse after that.

*

Tom wakes up one night to a thump and a curse.

He opens blurry eyes and hears harsh panting from his left and rolls to face the noise, opening his eyes wider.

All he can see is Loki’s shadowy shape, outlined dimly by the moonlight. He leans back and flicks on the bedside lamp, sitting up and rubbing his eyes.

“Loki?”

Loki is hunched over, gripping the bedside table with white knuckles and breathing harshly.

Tom pushes the blanket back, aware that something, everything, all of this, is wrong, because Loki shouldn’t hurt, shouldn’t be in pain and it kills Tom a little bit to know it and be unable to fix it. “Loki, what is it?”

Loki turns his head slightly and looks at Tom over his shoulder; his voice is tight and brittle when he speaks and it breaks Tom’s heart a little bit more. “I can’t feel my left foot, Thomas.”

Tom takes in a deep breath and crawls over the bed, wrapping one arm around Loki’s waist and pulling him back towards the bed, stumbling a bit.

He rests his chin on Loki’s shoulder as Loki looks down at his foot and says quietly, in a voice that is disbelieving and pained. “I can’t feel my foot, Thomas.”

Tom swallows thickly and nods, kissing Loki’s temple and has absolutely nothing to say to that.

Because there is nothing to say to that, not when it’s something Tom is helpless and hopeless against.

Loki wraps his arms around Tom’s and blinks hard, still looking down at his foot, his breathing turns erratic. “My foot, Thomas.”

Tom nods and closes his eyes. “I know, just, just breathe with me, calm down, it’ll be okay, just breathe with me.”

Loki shudders in his arms and breathes with him and says quietly, through thick, held-back tears. “I can’t feel it.”

The next day Loki’s entire side is numb and useless and he ignores it, doesn’t acknowledge it and Tom says nothing of it either.

*

Thor doesn’t take the news well.

He flees and is missing for two weeks, the first of which finds a thunderstorm raging the entire time.

Tom watches Loki who watches the thunderstorm from the balcony of his chambers in Asgard, wearing nothing but a white tunic and black leggings, soaked to the fucking bone.

Tom goes out and wraps his arms around his waist and rests his chin on his shoulder, Loki’s shaking hands come up to grasp his forearms.

“You’ll catch a cold, Loki.” Tom whispers and Loki laughs softly.

“Does it matter, Thomas?” He asks, still gazing up at the sky, letting the rain pelt him, the lightning striking the sky and paling his face further.

Tom nods and Loki sighs. “I can’t feel my entire left side, Thomas, does it matter if I get a cold?”

*

Loki seeks out Sif.

She is still wary of him, as she should be, but he needs her help and it would not do well to go to anyone else for what he needs.

“It will take time.” She tells him and he nods, gritting his teeth against another headache, one that makes the sight of his left eye go completely black and sends pins and needles through his left side. “This poison is complicated and has been banned for centuries.”

“I’m aware, which is why I asked this of you; can you do it?” She stares at him narrowly before nodding stiffly. “Thank you, lady Sif.” He tells her before bowing slightly and making to retreat.

“Why me?” She shouts at him when he reaches the door, and he hesitates, his fingers curled on the bronze handle. “Why ask this of me, why not ask a healer or do it yourself?”

Loki blinks his eyes back into clarity and turns, watching her.

“Because soon I will be unable to and because I knew you would understand.” He says slowly and Sif narrows her eyes at him.

“Why would I understand?” She asks, but it is not bitter or angry, simply curious.

“Is this how you would choose to leave?” he asks her and she stiffens, muscles tight in offence where she stands. “Would you choose to be swallowed by your own body, by your own useless vessel? Or would you take any path that was available to you?”

She looks out at the balcony where Asgard is storming. “A foolish man’s way out.”

“Or a desperate god’s choice.” He murmurs and she presses her lips together in a thin, disapproving line.

He hesitates before stepping towards her; he lifts his useless left hand with his shaking right, the limb numb and dead. “I won’t have my life taken in such an unworthy way, were you in this situation, you would ask the same of me.”

She looks back at him, watching his arm, the way it trembles uselessly even when he drops it to his side “Why would I?”

“Because you would not have your life robbed from you in a way so useless either.” His lips twitch into a smile. “I know you, you will die in glory and fire and pain, not by your withering body.”

She returns his half-hearted smile and nods. “I would hope so.”

Loki laughs softly. “For your sake, I would too.”

Perhaps Sif does not like him, will never like him and will hardly tolerate him, but she understands him and that is what matters.

*

When they go to the other Midgard the Avengers treat Loki much the same as well.

Tony still lets Loki tinker with the electronics he’s cordoned off for Loki’s investigations, an old toaster, broken robots and light bulbs that won’t light.

Natasha still spars with him, she doesn’t take pity on him and when Clint joins the fray they team up on Loki the way they usually do.

Steve still lets him work on infiltration plans, staring for hours at blueprints of places Tom can’t even fathom.

And it’s easy and normal to a certain extent.

Because Loki doesn’t say that he’s working on the microwave and drops it more than once, he doesn’t tell that when Natasha hits him just right his left side fluctuates feeling, he doesn’t mention that his vision goes in and out as he and Steve work on the infiltration plans.

He doesn’t say that by the end of the week he’s feeling weaker than ever and he’s so exhausted he can barely stand, let alone summon the will to get out of bed.

But he does, he does these things because he has to, because he won’t give in, not until he has to.

*

Loki wipes the condensation off the mirror and cocks his head to the side, pushing his fingers against his temple and blinking rapidly.

One is bright, shining with intelligence and awareness, the other is a pale, flat and dead and he closes his eyes against the sight of it.

Tom walks in and smiles and takes the hand that’s rubbing circles into his temple and kisses the palm. “You okay?”

“Fine, Thomas.” Loki opens his eyes and clears his throat and Tom sighs, kissing him again.

“Come on.” He takes Loki’s hand and guides him from the bathroom, trailing water in their wake and presses him into the bed and kisses his temple, his eyelids, his forehead, his nose and mouth and cheeks and throat and loves him slowly, so slowly that Loki aches to know he’s going to lose this.

*

“And he’s not scared?” Natasha asks and Tom shrugs and doesn’t answer for a moment.

“He hasn’t said as much to me.” He answers slowly and Natasha sits down and frowns at him.

“Would he?” She asks and Tom looks away, feeling a little lost.

No, Loki wouldn’t tell him, Loki hides these things, the things that truly frighten him.

Tom remembers how long it took Loki to kiss him, how long it took Loki to say he loved him, how long it has taken Loki to do anything that truly matters.

“No, but I think I might be more terrified than he is.” He answers honestly.

“We all have to die sometime.” She says and he smiles tightly.

For all that he likes Natasha and respects her skills, on an emotional front they are not equals.

Where Tom feels too much sometimes, Natasha doesn’t know how to feel properly.

“Does that make it easier?” He murmurs and she shrugs, not dismissive, no, not at all.

*

“It’s getting worse.” Loki whispers, his right hand weak, so weak, clutching at Tom’s shirt.

“What?” Tom asks, carding his fingers through Loki’s hair.

Loki takes in a shaky breath, whistling and wheezy as he breathes in.

“Breathing,” he whispers. “Living.”

“Then just breathe with me,” Tom answers, at a loss for anything else to do. “Just breathe with me.”

Loki takes in another shuddering breath and closes his eyes and breathes and perhaps it is a little easier when he’s breathing with Tom.

*

“Fifteen minutes, perhaps.” Sif explains, setting the little vial of clear liquid in Loki’s palm and Loki closes his trembling fingers around it.

“What happens first?” He wheezes out.

She sits down and takes a deep breath. “Sleep, the herbs in there will make you drowsy while the belladonna takes hold and then it will cut off your brain function, slow your heart and then stop it, a total of fifteen minutes, at most.”

Loki nods. “Thank you.”

Sif looks over to where Tom is sleeping, curled up on his side and facing away from them. “Does he know?” She asks, looking back at Loki and Loki shakes his head. “He won’t approve.”

Loki smiles tightly and clutches the little vial of poison in his hand. “It isn’t his choice.”

“You were his choice.” Sif whispers and Loki catches her pleading look with his one good eye. “He chose to take you, keep you; he has a choice in letting you go.”

“I never had a choice with him.” Loki answers back, voice cracking, because Sif, for as much as they have always disagreed, death makes it moot, makes it useless to hate and loathe and mock. “I never would have been able to choose his life to keep or give away.”

“You did,” she murmurs, reaching for his dead hand, gripping the cold flesh tightly and he closes his eyes tightly, using his other hand to curl his fingers around hers. “Because you chose him as well.”

*

Tom doesn’t take his decision lightly.

“No.” Tom says firmly, his voice brooking no argument.

“Thomas,” Loki rasps and Tom shakes his head, pulling away and covering his mouth with a shaking hand.

“No, Loki, you can’t, you can’t just,” he turns back to Loki and shakes his head again. “You can’t just, just take yourself out of here, take yourself away from me, you can’t.”

His voice breaks and he reaches for him cupping his face in his hands and pressing trembling lips to Loki’s forehead. “You can’t, this isn’t acceptable.”

Loki grips his wrist with his good hand and pulls back, meeting his gaze.

“Thomas,” he whispers and Tom licks his lips, hearing the effort it takes for just that one word. “This is how I want to do this.”

“Why?” Tom shouts and Loki winces. “Why are you deliberately taking yourself from me, purposely removing yourself? Why are you making this hurt worse than it has to?”

“Because I can control this!” Loki shouts, the most emotion he’s shown in weeks, leaving him panting and gasping.

Tom swallows thickly and steps back, Loki’s hand dropping limply to his lap. “I see.”

Loki blinks blearily up at him. “Do you?” he gestures feebly with his shaking hand. “I can’t control that I’m dying, no magic or medicine can help, but,” He takes in a grating breath and presses on, his voice rough from speaking so much. “If I can’t stop it, I will control it.”

Tom is silent for a moment before he crouches in front of Loki and takes his hands in his. “This is what you want?”

“Yes, this is what I want.” He murmurs. “I want to be the one to make the decision of how I leave this world and this is something that I can do for you, make it as painless as possible.”

Tom’s laugh is bitter and sad. “It’ll be painful for me no matter what.”

“Then I would do it in the least painful way for myself.” Loki says with a soft smile, reaching for him and dragging him up for a kiss, his grip feather-light and trembling and weak and so, so not his Loki.

But he is still his Loki, still his, with his one pale eye and dead left side and his vomiting and heavy breathing and his dying body that is still, still the body Tom loves, still the god he loves.

*

Loki knows he has things he needs to take care of, amends he needs to make before he passes, but he has only one person he truly feels needs to hear it.

So when Thor comes to help him get through the Bifröst, Loki tries to take the opportunity to let him know.

“Ready?” Thor murmurs and Loki nods weakly, his head thrumming with a thumping pain at the base of his skull.

He feels Thor lift him, one arm under his knees, the other under his shoulders and Loki’s head lolls to the side, resting against Thor’s shoulder.

He clutches weakly at his tunic as Thor carries him through Stark tower. “Thor,” he rasps. “Thor—”

“Shh,” Thor whispers, and Loki feels the wind whipping around them as Thor steps outside. “Save your strength, brother.”

Loki clutches tighter. “You, you have to know, Thor, Thor, I-I—”

His voice gives out in a fit of coughing and Thor pulls him in tighter to whisper in his good ear.

“I know, brother, I know.” His voice a soft, low rumble in Loki’s ear, radiating from Thor’s strong chest into Loki’s weaker, thinner one.

Loki opens his eyes, the vision in his right doubled. “Do you?”

Thor nods and though Loki can’t see well, he can tell he’s smiling. “Yes, Loki, I do.”

Loki takes in a rasping breath. “Good.”

*

Loki has never given much thought to where or how he will die.

He always assumed he would die in fire and blood and battle, not be lost to a traitorous, useless, deteriorating body.

He climbs from the bed and picks up the little vial before stumbling, gathering the blankets around himself, shivering despite the warmth of the fire in the hearth.

Tom stirs briefly and Loki holds his shattered breathing, waiting for Tom to settle back to sleep.

He stumbles from the bed, holding the cane that Bruce gave him at the last examination and makes his way slowly from the room and out into the palace.

The palace is cold and dark at the late night hour and he shuffles out and into the silver starlight, shivering increasing as he makes his way out to the gardens, to Frigga’s statue, his bare feet frozen and tender as he steps carefully over the grass.

He pauses at each bench as he passes, gasping for breath until he feels his strength return slightly before continuing until he reaches the bench a few yards from her statue.

He closes his eyes and curls under the blanket and waits.

By far, by far this is more terrifying than falling or loving or needing Tom and that, in and of itself makes it the most petrifying thing he’s been through.

He hasn’t told Tom, hasn’t shown him the fear in his blood and heart, because it burns so bright, so hot and painful and he can’t let Thomas see him like this, can’t let him know how absolutely petrified he is of dying.

Because there is nothing that he has ever been afraid of, nothing more petrifying than this.

He was never afraid when he was training for battle, when he fell, when he fought against the dark elves with Thor, when he found Tom and realized that one day Thomas would be gone and he would be alone.

No, those things were frightening, but this is a bone deep, heart pounding fear that he can’t escape and that makes it even worse and he can’t have Tom knowing this, seeing this, because Loki is supposed to be the god that does not fear and right now he is drowning in it.

So he sits and waits and holds the little vial of poison in his fist.

*

Tom finds him eventually, of course, because Tom is always aware of where Loki is, how he is feeling and he has been utterly, unwaveringly attentive since he first found out Loki was dying.

He says nothing to him, just pulls him close and Loki opens the blanket and lets Tom in, feels his still sleep-warm body still clad in his pajamas.

“Did you take it?” Tom whispers after some time and Loki shakes his head blindly, opening his clenched palm and pushing the vial of liquid into Tom’s hand.

“I’m n-not—” he coughs brokenly and tries again. “I’m not ready yet.”

“Then just let me know when you are.” Tom whispers and pulls Loki into him more tightly.

They sit in the moonlight in silence and Tom rubs circles into Loki’s shoulder where he holds him.

*

“I was always prepared to lose you, Thomas.” Loki murmurs, chin on Tom’s shoulder, vision blurry and nearly gone as he gazes at Tom. “I was never prepared to leave you.”

“I know,” Tom answers back, stroking his side softly. “But leave it to you to defy the odds.”

Loki closes his eyes. “I never wanted it to be you first, but I always thought,” he breathes in, his throat raw and dry. “I always thought it would be you.”

Tom laughs softly. “Maybe we should have followed in the footsteps of Romeo and Juliet.”

Loki takes in a wheezing breath. “This isn’t a fairytale, Thomas.”

Tom brushes his lips over the shell of Loki’s ear. “Neither was Romeo and Juliet.”

*

The sun rises slowly, morning light breaking over the gardens and tinting the darkness of the sky with pink and orange.

“Thomas?” He murmurs and Tom hums softly, rubbing the obvious bumps of his spine through the thin material of his night shirt. “I’m ready, now.”

And Tom kisses the corner of his mouth and presses their foreheads together and breathes in sadly and his breath is warm and shaky and it makes Loki’s heart stutter in his chest as Tom uncorks the glass vial and curls Loki’s fingers around it.

Loki hesitates for a moment and meets Tom’s eyes. “Just, just don’t leave me here alone, not after, please—”

And Tom cuts him off with a shake of his head. “I won’t.”

And Loki nods once, slow and painful and presses the cold glass to his dry, chapped lips and swallows.

*

“I’m scared, Thomas.” Loki confesses as he feels the poison take over slowly, numbing him from the inside out.

“I know.” Tom says, rocking him slightly and Loki grips his shirt, his fingers light and weak and aching.

“I prepared myself, prepared myself to lose you, but this,” he shakes his head and gasps, his throat dry as his eyes grow damp and warm. “This, I never prepared to leave you, Thomas, please, Thomas, I’m terrified, lie to me, Thomas, tell me something, talk to me, please, make it go away.”

And Tom presses their faces close and takes a shaky breath in and holds Loki tight and has nothing to say, but this.

“I know, I know, but wasn’t this worth it? Perhaps this is the worst way for it to end, but would it be this terrifying if what we had wasn’t worth it, would it be this excruciating to lose it if it wasn’t worth having, even for as short of a time as we had it?”

And Loki closes his eyes tight and thinks that perhaps it is worth it.

Perhaps everything was worth it, perhaps if it wasn’t this painful to lose it was never worth having and this is raw and terrifying and the worst thing that he’s ever experienced and it is the price he has to pay when losing the best thing he’s ever experienced.

But dying like this, with Tom around him, surrounding him, inside him, in every cell and vein and pumping, pulsing, beat of his heart, maybe this isn’t so bad.

“Yes,” Loki says and reaches a fumbling hand for Tom’s face and kisses that mouth that he can find from memory alone and will never get to have again. “Yes, it was worth it.”

*

A month after the tremor is when, well…

Because a body is just a body, Tom knows this better than anybody.

*


End file.
